


sunshine in winter

by Areiton



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bombing, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers is Not Captain America, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: He doesn’t dream.The Widow asks, sometimes, if he has nightmares but he doesn’t dream.Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, though, there is a man. A man with sunshine hair and sky for miles eyes.They aren’t dreams and they’ll never be nightmares, but he wakes, and with a voice ripped apart by screaming, he whispers, “Sunshine.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 16
Kudos: 203
Collections: Stucky Secret Santa 2019





	sunshine in winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seinmit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seinmit/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, friend!! I really hope this fic makes you happy--I had a ton of fun writing it, even though it took a darker turn than I expected. I played with two Winter Soldiers, recovery and the team finding out about Bucky's feelings for Steve. So--enjoy!!!

When the Widow brings him in--the Asset is silent, a ghost drifting between her and Hawkeye. He’s restrained but docile, following where Widow leads.

He doesn’t know his name, or this woman who calls him Yasha. He doesn’t know  _ anything _ , nothing except the blood on his hands and the mission he completed, and the long empty nothing that comes after. 

He follows her and she leads him to a room that she says is not a cell, that is bigger than the tube and he steps into it, and wonders as the door closes behind him, if she knows that weapons are not given rooms. 

They are given a holster to wait in, silent and cold, until their master pulls them free and aims them and pulls the trigger. 

~*~ 

He wakes up screaming and that is when he realizes--

He does not know his name or the Widow or why he killed the scientist she was trying to protect. He does not remember before or his mother or his Handler. 

There is a screaming black void filled with pain and 

_ Sunshine.  _

~*~ 

The Winter Soldier starts screaming twelve hours after Natasha brings him in and locks him into the Hulk containment room. 

And doesn’t stop. 

Sometimes, it’s just wordless screams, rage or fear. 

Worst though, is when he screams for sunshine, a howl agonized and heartbroken, and she listens, her back to the wall and tears on her face. 

~*~ 

“Who is he calling?” 

“No one,” Tony says, impatiently. “Look at his brain scans. There’s no higher functioning going on here. Sunshine isn’t a person, it’s not a code--it’s just a word caught in a loop. It’s as meaningless as a child screaming  _ fuck _ . They don’t know what they’re saying.” 

“That  _ child _ has a kill count closing in on a four digits,” Clint points out and Tony shrugs. 

“He’s a weapon. An effective one. No one is denying that,” Tony says. 

“Can you fix him?” Natasha asks, cutting across the chatter and building arguments. She looks at Tony because Tony--if he can’t do it, she needs to know. 

She needs that. 

Tony stares back, and she wonders, later, what he sees. If it’s desperation or hope or grief or guilt. Maybe all of it.

Whatever it is, his shoulders slump and he nods. “I’m going to try.” 

She blinks hard and nods. Stands and he catches her hand. Squeezes it. “It might not work, Tasha.” 

“I’ve never known you to fail at fixing something, Antosha,” she says and kisses his cheek before she slips out of the room. 

~*~ 

“You sure about this?” Sam asks her, a few days later. The Winter Soldier is quiet, slumped exhausted against the wall, but it won’t last. He only sleeps for a few hours at a time before he wakes up screaming. 

“Do you remember when I came in from the cold?” she asks. It’s a stupid question--Sam and Clint brought her in, risked the wrath of Fury and SHIELD to get her clear of the Red Room. They saw something in her that she still doesn’t know if she believes is real and true and  _ worth _ saving. “Do you know why you were able to turn me?” 

Sam leans against the wall, hands in his pockets. “Thought you just got tired of blood on your hands for reasons no one was willing to explain.” 

She smiles. It’s not untrue. “I had a teacher, in the Red Room. Taught me to dance with knives and kill a man in twelve ways with nothing but my body. I was good--and then he came and I wasn’t just good, I was the  _ best _ . Better than anything the Red Room had ever seen. I went on a mission with him once. If you know who to listen to--they  _ still _ talk about that mission in Russia.” 

There’s a spark of pride, of smug satisfaction in her voice that makes his shoulders loosen. 

“He taught me more than that, though. He taught me what cookies taste like warm from the oven. How soft roses feel. What it feels like to wake scared and be held safe. Yasha took the girl that the Red Room shaped and moulded me into the finest weapon we ever made--and tempered that with humanity.” 

She goes quiet. He’s stirring again, moving in little jerks, his breath going quick and shallow. 

He’ll start screaming soon. 

“I have to help him, Cap,” she says, and there’s something broken and pleading and unyielding in her tone. 

Sam nods, slow. “Yeah. Ok, Tasha. Ok.” 

~*~ 

He doesn’t dream. 

The Widow asks, sometimes, if he has nightmares but he doesn’t dream. 

Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, though, there is a man. A man with sunshine hair and sky for miles eyes. 

They aren’t dreams and they’ll never be nightmares, but he wakes, and with a voice ripped apart by screaming, he whispers, “ _ Sunshine.”  _

~*~ 

The Widow stands anxious by him while Ironman clanks into his room. 

He watches, quiet and disinterested. 

“This is stupid,” Ironman says. 

“Safety, Stark,” a sharp disembodied voice calls out. 

“He isn’t  _ moving.  _ He isn’t going to hurt anyone--he---” the faceplate snaps up and a dark eyed man stares at him, challenging and belligerent. “You aren’t going to hurt anyone, are you, Snowflake?” 

The Asset blinks placidly. 

“See, Cap, he doesn’t--” 

He  _ moves _ and Widow is clinging to him, Ironman armor unyielding under his body, a warm throat soft under his hands and someone is  _ screaming _ , and he realizes it’s him when the needle bites down, Widow’s needle, and her Widow Bites both sinking their teeth in. 

He drops like a stone into the black, and his last thought is, 

_ Protect him. Protect him. No one can ever know.  _

~*~ 

Tony has a ring of bruises on his throat, and a glass of Scotch in his hand and Sam thinks he should be angrier than he is. “He remembered.” 

“What do you mean?” Clint asks. “Remembered what?” 

“He isn’t hurting anyone,” Tony says urgently. “What changed, what set him off? He was almost catatonic and I said Cap and he  _ remembered.”  _

Sam and Bruce and Clint and Thor stare back at him, unconvinced. 

“You think--he can’t remember that.” 

“They served together, right? What’s the Smithsonian say--inseparable on both school year and battlefield, Rogers followed Barnes in death? He served with Captain America--and he reacted to the name.” 

Sam is quiet. It’s Clint who says, “So what?” 

Tony isn’t watching them, though. His gaze is on Natasha, pale and quiet and still. “So if he remembers  _ that? _ I can fix him.” 

~*~ 

Widow hovers while the man--he nudges at something in the Asset, tugging loose a string that he can’t help but worry at--scurries around the brightly lit room. He’s muttering to himself, intent on the little square of glass caught in his hands and barking orders at an unseen person named Jarvis. 

“You can say no to any of this, Yasha,” Widow--she says her name is Natasha, her name is little flower, her name is sweetheart, her name is  _ sweet spider-- _ says, and he blinks at her. 

Assets don’t say no. Weapons have no choice. 

“Sit here,” the man orders and Widow glares at him, but the Asset does, strips out of the loose shirt they gave him and settles in the chair, his mouth opening for the mouth guard. 

Widow--Natasha, little flower, sweetheart, sweet spider--and Tony Stark stare at him, and he does not understand their expressions or hesitation or his purpose here. 

“Ready to comply,” he prompts, hopeful and anxious and Tony startles into movement. 

His hands, though, are gentle, and the sharp bite of the rubber mouth guard never comes and the pain never comes. 

Sunshine and blue skies fill up his mind and he  _ screams _ , and wishes, desperately, for the pain.

~*~ 

It takes two months of BARF treatments before Tony tells them he thinks it’s working. Two months of passive Winter Soldier and wound tight Natasha and a team that’s just a little bit off it’s stride. 

And since no one thought to let the super villains of the world know they’re distracted--they’re mostly left alone, wrapped in a quiet window of nothing, where they’re entire focus is Yasha and his recovery. 

It’s slow. There are days when he sits under the BARF headpiece, still as a statue. 

There are days when he screams himself hoarse. 

Tony thinks that the days when he shakes, full body tremble he can’t quite stop, are the worst, the way he shies away from touch, flinching like he is afraid they’ll strike him. 

He kicks Natasha out of the simulations after the first two sessions, and works through them with Yasha alone. 

What happened to him--the things Hydra did and the memories they stole--is enough of a violation without letting anyone observe it. 

He is, after every session, violently sick, to the point that Bruce intervenes, stops the treatments for a week so that Tony can rest and recover. Yasha watches him, when Bruce explains it, his eyes bright and curious, and start bringing a thermos of mint tea and ginger cookies to their sessions. 

~*~

He doesn’t remember. 

Not everything. 

He remembers feelings--warmth and safety, the quiet comfort of home, the deep seated fear of war. He remembers the Chair and Zola and breaking. 

“There are words,” he says, one night after a session with Tony and Natasha watches him with blank, careful eyes. “They can--they are not good, the words.” 

“I’ll tell Tony.” 

He nods, relieved. 

Digging the words out, removing them, is a special kind of hell, but with each one that Tony helps him remove, he remembers more and he feels like someone new, someone that is not just an Asset. 

He remembers that he is supposed to protect sunshine. 

~*~ 

Tony Stark watches him. 

There’s something bright and knowing in the genius’ gaze that makes Yasha twitch, uncomfortable, in his seat. The ginger cookies are almost gone. “You’re hiding something from me, in there,” Tony says, and Yasha pauses. 

“You know that you can’t, right?” Tony says, gently. “That I see it even when you try to hide it. That’s the way the sim works, Yasha.” 

Terror, sharp and copper bright on his tongue, grips him and for a moment, mindless and afraid, he wants to kill Tony. 

He wants to kill him and he wants to  _ run _ . 

“I scrubbed the footage,” Tony says, calmly, like he isn’t intimately aware that his life hangs in the balance and by Yasha’s precarious control. “I’m the only one who knows. I’m the only one who will  _ ever _ know, Yasha.” 

He leans closer, puts his fragile throat in range of Yasha’s metal fist and says, earnest and sincere, “I’m going to protect him for you.” 

~*~ 

He doesn’t dream. 

He has nightmares, and for the first time in months, he wakes screaming for sunshine. He wakes screaming and utterly alone and the room is soft and warm and nothing like he remembers and oh god, oh  _ fuck _ , he  _ remembers.  _

He crawls into the closet and cradles his knives and weeps, hidden from the team and when sunshine peeks through the crack under the door, he shoves a black shirt in the gap and hides from that too. 

~*~ 

“Are you happy, Yasha?” Natasha asks him. 

He remembers her, tiny and serious and beautiful and so terribly sad. 

He sees that girl, a tiny fragile overlay of the woman she became, and he wonders why she cares for him so much, so deeply, when he shaped her into something so similar to himself. 

“Should I be?” he asks. 

He wants to be happy, if that would please her, and Tony. He thinks the rest of the team--Hulk and Clint and Thor and even Sam, who he cannot stand to look at--would be pleased, but their opinions are distant and unimportant, compared to her’s and Tony.

Her eyes are wet and her mouth is turned into a smile that doesn’t reach far enough, and he thinks, a little bit panicked, that he made her sad. 

“I think,” he says, slowly, “That I am as happy as I can be.” 

Sitting next to her and letting her paint his fingernails a bright red, while his mint tea cools at his side, and warm sunlight streams in through the windows--he thinks maybe it’s even true. 

~*~ 

It’s not a special day. It’s a session, just like all the rest--a mess of memories he doesn’t want and Tony’s nauseous when it was over. Tony is nibbling on a ginger cookie and says, “What do you want to do, when we finish?” 

Yasha tips his head back. “I’ve never thought about it.” 

Tony hums a little. “You should.” 

There’s something about the way he says it--pointed and heavy--that makes Yasha blink at him. 

“I don’t know how to live my life without him,” Yasha whispers and Tony swallows the last of the mint tea and throws the thermos in the trash. 

“Then let’s find him.” 

~*~

“How  _ whole _ are you talking?” Sam asks from the head of the table. 

Tony seesaws his hand a little. “He’s got maybe seventy percent of his memories pre-War back. The triggers Hydra put in him are gone, but the muscle memory and combat training is still there.” 

Sam frowns and Tony shifts forward, braces his elbows on the table. “He’s safe, Cap. As safe as any of us are--and he has more incentive to want Hydra destroyed than anyone, including Widow. We’d be stupid not to use him.” 

“He’s been  _ used _ enough,” Natasha snaps and Tony shrugs. Leans back. 

“You’re acting like this isn’t something he wants. Like it’s not something he  _ asked _ for.” 

And that--that stops all of them. 

~*~

On the good nights--and the longer he is in Avengers tower, the longer he is with Widow and Tony and the team, the more  _ good nights _ happen--he doesn’t have nightmares. He sleeps, curled into a tight little ball on his too big bed, a gun hard under his pillow, and he wakes to sunlight and JARVIS’ reassurance and no dreams to shake the world under his feet. 

On the good nights, he sleeps and remembers nothing. 

There are nights when he remembers, and wakes, screaming. Nights when blood soaks his nightmares, when the sound of bodies hitting the ground echoes in his ears with Russian warnings and commands and he itches to obey and screams to defy them. 

He wakes from those in a cold sweat in a dark tower and goes to the gym, beats his fist bloody against the reinforced bags, runs until the treadmill breaks or his body gives out or Natasha arrives and forces him to rest. 

But there are some nights--

Nights when he wakes and he can feel a familiar weight in his arms, can almost taste the sugar sweet salty skin under his lips, can see sunshine slipping through metal fingers and sky for miles blue filling up his whole world. 

There are nights when he  _ dreams _ and he wakes, weeping, and on those nights, Tony slips into his room with a bag of ginger cookies. Sometimes, he brings coffee. Most of the time, he crawls up in Yasha’s sweaty sheets and they sit together in silence until the morning comes. 

“They used him, to keep my obedient,” Yasha says, one night. His voice is hoarse and rough. “They said they would kill him, if I didn’t comply. Sometimes--when they put me in the Chair, they would take him from me.” 

Tony never says anything, when he talks. 

He listens, like a confessor, and holds all of Yasha’s secrets. 

~*~ 

The Winter Soldier joins the Avengers. 

They don’t make a big production of it. 

One day, the team is called out to fight a new wave of Doom bots, and Yasha goes with them, kitted out in the black tac gear that Tony made special for him, a mask on his face to obscure his features. 

He  _ looks _ like the assassin that Hydra created and broke and leashed and used for decades. 

And as he stalks through the streets with his Skorpion and long knife, he is just as effective, a ghost of Hydra haunting the streets of New York. 

There's whispers after, and Fury demands explanations outright, while Natasha stares back blandly. 

"He's ours, and he's protected by us," she says, when he's ranted and shouted and ran himself down into silence. 

"He's dangerous," Fury snaps. 

"Yes," she says, her voice even. "He is. So am I, Nick. So is Sam and Clint. So are all of us. Why does Yasha scare you?" 

Fury stares at her, and finally, "When he breaks and hurts someone, it's on you." 

"If he breaks and hurts someone, it should be." 

The public likes him, silent and brooding and beautiful in his black and silver, with his hands gentle on a child he rescues, bloody and brutal when he's fighting, and his eyes shy when he stands with the Avengers on the platform and listens to Tony seduce the crowd. 

"They'll know," he murmurs, and Natasha smiles, a sharp edged Widow smile. 

"Yes," she agrees, placidly, "they will." 

~*~ 

"Do you remember the coordinates of the bases where they held you?" Sam asks, one afternoon when he's collapsed in a sweaty pile of wings and red. It's still strange to be next to this Captain America, a man with a wide friendly smile and a sharp tongue, who reminds him of the past in a way that is jarring and almost painful. 

There is still a part of him that wants to rip the stars and stripes off his uniform, rip the shield from his hands. He works very hard to ignore that. Yasha blinks at him, and there's something sharp and hungry in Sam's eyes that makes the answer easy and thoughtless. 

"Yes." 

~*~ 

He  _ likes _ this work, likes fighting with the others, storming through Hydra's bases and slaughtering them like rats. He likes hearing Tony over the comms, snarky and vibrantly alive, likes the banter of Sam and Clint and the comforting roar of the Hulk as he tears apart a sniper tower. He loves Natasha, padding on silent feet at his side, a shadow watching his back that is too slight, just slightly  _ other _ , but still his, for all of that. 

He loves watching the bases burn, while Natasha and Tony stand on either side of him, and the scent of blood in the air feels like a promise instead of a curse. 

He loves that with every base they destroy, Hydra's fear becomes more and more evident. 

~*~ 

He hates that with every base they raid, sunshine seems to slip further and further away. 

~*~ 

He is cold in his dreams. 

He is cold and sky for miles blue is steady, filling up his vision. 

He is cold and afraid, because he shouldn't be here, he died and he was scared but happy, happy to die if only because  _ he  _ didn't. 

The pain in his shoulder is a burning alive thing, something so deep and profound it settles in his gut and  _ twists _ , becomes a living thing that he carries with him. 

"If you comply, we will not hurt him," Zola says and he doesn't believe it, not truly, but he thinks he wants to. 

"If you comply, you will be reunited with him," Zola promises and it settles next to the pain of his arm, a living flame, a unquenchable hope. 

"You gotta fight," Sunshine murmurs. "You gotta fight them, Buck."

He doesn't want to, but he's obeyed Sunshine his entire life, since he knew what obedience was, and never out of fear or pain--he has only ever obeyed out of want and love, and he follows that now, and he fights. 

He fights, and there is blood on his fist, metal fingers, crumpled throats, dying screams, and he can taste the electricity in the air and he wants to see Sunshine, wants him more than he has ever wanted anything. 

They shoot him, shoot him, shoot him until he falls, all blood and pain, and they drag him to the Chair. 

"Disobedience, Asset, has its price," Zola promises, and he is  _ afraid _ . 

He wakes screaming when Sunshine stands before him, a scar on his shoulder and his eyes blank and unrecognizing. 

~*~ 

Tony gives him his own floor in the Tower, a vast set of rooms that he has no idea what to do with. 

Natasha fills them with her blades and widow bites, with food and discarded clothes, with pointe shoes that nudges at his memories until he asks her to find a pair for him. 

Her smile is small and pleased, and dancing with her again in the middle of the night, the dance room quiet except for the heave of their breathing and the sound of their feet on the ground reminds him of a snow bound house and long dark halls, and thirteen little girls, all lined up in rows. 

Natasha kisses his cheek when they are finished, when tears are hot on his cheeks, and slips away and he curls in his dark empty rooms and longs for something he doesn't dare name. 

~*~ 

"Yasha," Tony says, and there's an urgency to his tone that brings his head up, his eyes narrow and assessing. 

The footage is grainy and indistinct, but it's clear enough. 

The man is tall, broad shoulders and powerful muscles. He is impossible to miss, and Hydra has deployed him  _ brilliantly _ . 

"Is that a shield?" Bruce murmurs, watching, and it makes him twitch, fingers tightening. He wants to destroy this recording, wants to bury this evidence. 

He wants to watch it a thousand times, and curl around it in his bed. 

He wants. 

"Hydra has a new Asset," Natasha murmurs and he licks his lips. Looks at Tony who is watching him, steady and undemanding. 

It is his choice. 

His responsibility. 

His jaw clenches, tight and he bolts, his heart pounding and fear a sharp taste on his tongue. 

~*~ 

"You can't push this," Tony says. His arms are crossed across his chest, body unmoving where he's positioned himself in front of the door, blocking the team from their retreating teammate.

"If he knows something--"

"You asked me when we brought him home to fix him," Tony cuts in, eyes going to Natasha. "You push this, and I swear you'll break him as much as Hydra ever did." 

She recoils, her eyes wide and shocked and she opens her mouth but he shakes his head. "Leave it alone, Widow. All of you. When he's ready--he'll talk." 

"And what do we do about that in the meantime," Sam--Captain America, because that's who he's talking to, not Sam, not his friend--asks, nodding at the paused footage. 

Tony stares at it for a long moment. "We try our damndest to bring him in alive," Tony says. "Because if you hurt him--Yasha will kill you." 

~*~ 

He finds Yasha perched on the edge of the tower, legs dangling in open air, a cigarette dangling from his lips. 

"They won't chase him," Tony says and some of the tension drains out of his shoulders. "What will you do if we see him in the field?" 

They will. They both know damn well that they will. 

Yasha doesn't answer. He doesn't have an answer. 

~*~ 

They work their way through Hydra bases for six months and Hydra retaliates by sending their new Asset to sow chaos and blood. 

And he's  _ good _ at it. 

It's terrifying how good he is. 

It's terrifying how much Yasha wants to run, wants to bolt from the Avengers, the family who has brought him back to himself, and lose himself in familiar arms and the scent of gunmetal and blood. 

The months drag on, tension twisting tighter until he lays in bed awake every night, staring at the darkness and wondering when the fragile peace will shatter. 

~*~ 

They aren't on a mission. 

They are at a charity gala. 

Tony is dressed in black Gucci and a Santa hat, a Christmas tree in the corner where parents cluster around their children on Santa’s lap.

There are  _ children _ , little sunshine girls in tiny princess dresses, little brave boys in suits that makes Yasha melt, a little. One girl wears a blue tux, and stares at him with hopeful defiance, her bald head bright under the lights and he smiles and dances her across the ballroom floor and for a moment he actually feels like the last century was a dream, like he could still go dancing with Steve and a pretty girl. 

For a moment, while this brave little girl fighting a battle he can't imagine grins up at him, the horrors of Hydra and the weight of everything after feels like they belong to someone else. 

He feels like  _ Bucky _ . 

The ballroom explodes, a hot blast of fire and shrapnel and screams and he wraps around her, tiny and frail and precious. 

~*~

The fragile peace doesn't shatter. It fucking explodes and kills forty in the blast. 

~*~ 

Sunshine girls and brave boys, and blood and screaming, so fucking much screaming. He hands her, his tiny dance partner, off to a blood stained SHIELD agent, kisses her head and murmurs, “He’ll keep you safe.” 

He prays he’s right, and turns to the fight, pulling his Skorpion as he goes. 

The Asset is there, a black and red shield in hand, a gun in the other. He’s flanked by others, by black clad Hydra and one--

Yasha lifts his gun and fires, and the bomber falls, a neat bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Sky for miles blue flicks down and up again, finding him. 

He goes still, trapped under that gaze, and he can feel the heat of fire on his face, can hear the whine of Tony’s repulsors, can taste blood and electricity and he opens his mouth, a familiar name on his tongue, and his shield--black and bloody red--whips through the air, and nearly takes Yasha’s head off. 

~*~ 

Sam throws him into the wall, follows up the shove with his own body. Yasha can hear Natasha protesting and the shouts of Tony, but he tunes them out, focuses on Sam and his furious eyes. 

There is still blood on his cheek, Yasha notes, almost clinically. They are all still wearing the blood of tiny children and their dead parents. 

The blast took out the outer wall, where parents congregated, watching their sick children being  _ kids _ . He feels sick.

"Who the fuck was that?" Sam snarls. 

"Cap!" Tony shouts, furious, and Yasha flicks a look at him. 

He'll defend Yasha. He and Natasha both. Even now. 

Even with the blood of children on his hands. 

"His name is Sunshine," Yasha whispers.

~*~ 

He tells them. 

About falling and sky for miles eyes the last thing he saw. 

About waking in the snow and pain, and being dragged. 

About the scent of his arm burning and the sound of the saw against his bone. About Hydra and Zola and the steadfast belief that he'd be rescued. 

His best friend, the man he loved more than anything in the world was Steve fucking Rogers. He'd saved him once. He'd do it again. 

He tells them. 

About the pain, the electrocution and the torture. 

About the serum they filled his veins with and the years that slipped by and the belief that wavered, delicate and dying, that Steve would come for him. 

He tells them. 

About Steve Rogers encased in ice, wheeled into his own personal hell, and Zola's smile. 

About the promise Hydra made--that they would shape a weapon. 

About breaking, because if they used him--they wouldn't use Steve. 

He had spent his entire life protecting Steve Rogers, and he'd walk gladly into the jaws of hell to keep him safe, to keep him whole, and he did. 

It wasn't enough. 

~*~ 

“Why didn’t he tell us?” Sam asks, later, after Tony has led Yasha away, had fed him ginger snaps and mint tea and tucked him in a too soft bed and ordered JARVIS to watch him. 

“Hydra used Rogers to terrorize him. Kill or we’ll kill him. Obey, or we’ll hurt him. Obey  _ and _ we’ll hurt him. And the one rule was--if anyone ever learned about Rogers--he’d be killed. He was Hydra’s best kept secret because they used their best weapon to protect him.” 

Sam is staring at Tony, confusion and anger still bright and Tony huffs. “If a terrorist held Peggy Carter by the throat and said the only way you could protect her was to bomb a building full of druglords--wouldn’t you? If they were  _ bad _ people, and it protected the person you loved most? Clint--what line would you not cross to protect Tasha?” He shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “I don’t know that there  _ is  _ a line I wouldn’t cross to keep Rhodey safe.” 

“We all have that person we’d burn the world for--and Hydra used his.” 

~*~ 

He goes to the funerals. 

Each and every one. The first is held Christmas Eve.

The press is having a field day--Hydra on the streets of New York, a black clad shield wielding assassin among them. They flip between the images of violent fighting and Yasha being dragged down by Natasha to the bodies left in the wreckage. 

The public is furious, torn between anger at Hydra and the Avengers and Yasha thinks if they knew. 

If they knew who he was and what--they would turn against the Avengers completely. 

He sits in the back, and attends every funeral, and he wants, desperately, to run. 

~*~

There is something  _ off _ about the garage, as Yasha brings his bike to a halt, and lowers the stand. He shifts, liquid grace, off and when he straightens--

The world slows and he can feel the icy cold of Russian winters and the bite of the serum in his veins, the hard metal chair under his fingers. 

Sky for miles blue and sunshine yellow and a livid red scar on his throat that curls like a tentacle. 

“You know me?” Yasha asks and Steve Rogers tips his head, curiously. 

Sunshine. The only damn thing that made the decades with Hydra bearable, and he is standing here, now, years after Yasha was pulled away and  _ fixed. _

Hydra never could make Sunshine forget. Yasha forgot, over and over and over, retaining only enough to know to protect him, only enough to  _ love _ him. 

_ Sunshine _ . 

“Do you know me?” he asks, prays, hopes. 

Sunshine moves, a slow drift and he knows. 

Somewhere in the Tower, his team is panicking, is shifting into suits and reaching for weapons and scrambling to come to him. 

But he’s never needed to be protected from Sunshine. 

“You know me,” he says, a third time, and it’s not a question. 

There’s a light he thought he’d never see again in the sky blue eyes and his big body shudders as he curls down and around Yasha, and breathes. “Bucky.”

Yasha closes his eyes and cradles this man, this weapon, this broken soul. “Steve,” he murmurs. 

~*~ 

The team watches them, sometimes. 

They don’t understand--not truly. Sam doesn’t trust him. 

Yasha--he goes by Bucky now--Bucky doesn’t seem to care. He’s happy, finally, with his family beyond the doors of his spacious rooms, and Sunshine tucked warm in his bed. 

He wraps around him, and he’s safe, and they’re  _ together _ . 

“We’ll kill them all,” he promises, soft, a vow. 

Sunshine kisses him and the kiss tastes like winter. 

~*~ 

It takes time. 

There are nights when Bucky holds Steve and murmurs Russian until his throat is hoarse, and nights when Steve refuses touch, flinches away and lashes out, feral and defensive. 

There are nights when he wakes screaming. 

“Was it this bad?” he asks Tony, after two months. 

“Yes,” Tony says. He hands Bucky a bag of ginger snaps and smiles. “But you got better.” 

It takes time. 

But. 

There are nights, when Bucky wakes and Steve is wrapped around him, and snoring softly. 

There are nights, when Bucky murmurs to him, and Steve smiles, soft and shy and reaches for him. 

There are nights when he arches into Bucky’s touch, like a cat seeking affection, and almost purrs when Bucky scratches through his hair, pleased and happy. 

“Is it worth it?” Sam asks, once. 

“Yes,” Bucky says, not hesitating. He watches Steve sparring with Natasha and his heartbeat trips over itself when he catches sky for miles blue and sunshine bright. “Yes.” 

It takes time. 

But. 

He wakes to sunshine sweet kisses. 

He wakes to storm sky eyes and a hot wet mouth. 

He wakes to hot coffee and lazy fingers stained with lead and paint and Steve, Steve,  _ Steve _ , smiling down at him, lazy and indolent and happy. 

“Can we stay here forever?” Steve asks, smears the words into his skin and Bucky arches up, into his sure grip and his soft kiss and his steady unwavering love. 

He thought he was protecting Steve, all those years. And he thinks, still, that he is. 

But Steve--Steve was saving him, too. Every damn day. 

He couldn’t live without this. He won’t.  _ He won’t _ . 

“Buck,” Steve pleads and Bucky cries, a sharp noise that devolves into a single word, and he chants it, as Steve fucks him, the word that guided him through all those dark years. 

_ Sunshine.  _

It’s all the answer he needs. 


End file.
